Rosa Parks Statue Unveiled At US Capitol

The civil rights icon becomes the first black woman to be honoured with a full-length statue in the US Capitol's Statuary Hall.

8:49pm UK, Wednesday 27 February 2013
Sky News US Team, in New York

A statue of civil rights icon Rosa Parks, who refused to give up her seat to a white man on a bus in segregated Alabama in 1955, has been unveiled at the US Capitol.

President Barack Obama helped unveil the statue, saying Mrs Parks had taken her rightful place among those who have shaped the course of US history.

He said: "We do well by placing a statue of her here, but we can do no greater honour to her memory than to carry forward the power of her principle and a courage born of conviction."
The statue honouring Mrs Parks resides in the Capitol's Statuary Hall
Mrs Parks was arrested for not giving up her seat, triggering the Montgomery bus boycott that brought a young clergyman, the Reverand Martin Luther King Jr, to national prominence as a civil rights leader.

4. If I were Obama...

...and the Supreme Court ends up striking down Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, I would take the statue down again.

And I would make it a public ceremony, with a statement to the effect that I was not willing to be a party to us patting ourselves on the back like this at the same time as we had states actively working to undo the legacy of Rosa Parks. We'll put this statue into storage until we're actually worthy of putting it on display in the Capitol.

(I also would have sent federal marshals to polling places where they were challenging people's ballots: "You want to act like a Jim Crow state, Michigan? Ok, we'll treat you like a Jim Crow state.")